Chapter 21 is not going out but going in

  There is no road ahead, and a ditch has appeared in front of us, as if it had been cut off. Thirty meters away from here, a brand new staircase stands quietly waiting there.

  What to do? This is the question we ask ourselves the most, everything else can be solved, only this one is a bit troublesome. From our human perspective, it's impossible to jump over such a long distance. But there are no available mechanisms around us to fill in this gap. Pengpeng's dagger has almost smashed half of the wall, but stones are still stones, and soil is still soil, nothing has changed.

  "Are you going back?" Pengpeng asked.

  "It seems there's really no way out." I said, actually I wanted to see how he would react to the coffin, if he had a solution, it would prove that he wasn't an ordinary Beijing guy.

  "Yes, it's so far away. We're not Monkey King, a single somersault won't get us there." The coffin was also shaking its head.

  "I suddenly had an idea of a thoughtful person."

  "Sister's husband, it's all so sudden, how can you still be so calm and collected?"

  "Don't discuss the details! You see, from those three doors just now, we saw a ground full of corpses, but the old monk on the second floor was sitting there calmly, and nothing there was destroyed. This means that no one went up, and everyone died right there."

  It can also be said that the old monk was the murderer, and after going up, he was seriously injured and died there.

  "Is there blood on your cassock?"

  "No."

  "That's right, but when we entered the Buddhist hall just now, it was also clean and tidy, without a single corpse. If these people were killed while escaping, they should have died in a scattered manner, one here and one there, but as we walked along this road, we couldn't see any corpses again."

  "What do you mean?" Pengpeng also understood a bit.

  "The chasm in front of us is not something ordinary people can cross, so I think those dead people never came here at all, but lived between the second floor scripture hall and the third floor with three doors. Judging from their identity as monks, this strange vertical tomb must be suppressing some terrible creature."

  "You're saying that those people weren't killed by the ones who were let out from here, but rather by the ones who wanted to get in." The coffin also understood.

  "Not bad, when you passed through those three gates, did you encounter any corpses?"

  "Yes, I just received the call from there."

  "I am too." The coffin replied in the same manner.

  "That dead monk gave us a preconceived notion that it must be someone inside who wanted to kill their way out. It can be said that the ones who came in were three people, or possibly three moles who had been hiding among the monks all along. After they grasped some information, they killed off all the monks here and headed straight inside. However, after entering that strange door, there was no way to find a way out. Either they starved to death in there, or as you said, they died from severe injuries."

  We looked at this impossible place to cross, and imagined that it was originally created to block all roads forward and backward. What terrible things would be waiting for us there? A graveyard guarded by the living, a graveyard where monks chant day and night to dispel evil spirits, a graveyard filled with resentment after being slaughtered... then who is buried beneath? Why did my past life bring us this infinite fear of separation?

  "Are you going back?" Still the same question, still PongPong asking.

  "If they don't want us to go in, then we won't go in." The coffin also seemed to have given up.

  I'll take a look at this dark hole too, and stand up as well. As the oldest one here, I should be the one to declare an end to this action.

  "Bang! Bang!" A loud noise came from above the stairs, like something was rolling down and hitting the ground, getting louder and closer.